Learning from Israel

Andrew Bacevich contends that Israel's incursion into Gaza is an admission of strategic failure. It will not end the violence; it will make it worse.

Rather than enhancing Israeli security, occupation has produced a never-ending war of attrition. Although the Israeli army seldom loses an engagement in that war, the conflict is one in which Israel cannot realistically expect to achieve definitive victory. However great the Israeli edge in tanks and fighter-bombers, demography rather than weaponry is likely to determine the conflict's ultimate outcome: That the Palestinian and Arab Israeli birthrate far exceeds the birthrate among Jewish Israelis is a fact with enormous strategic implications.

There are three lessons we should draw from the Israeli experience:

First, getting in may be easy; getting out is the hard part. Once embraced, a tar baby becomes impossible to release. For this reason, the notion that intervention offers a handy problem solver is an illusion.

Second, occupation by outsiders produces alienation, resistance, and radicalization, nowhere more so than in the Islamic world. The longer the stay, the more severe the reaction.

Third, as instruments of pacification, conventional armies possess modest utility. Rather than facilitating political solutions, coercion only exacerbates the underlying problem.